How to Go Beyond Technique Mary Jo Barrett When it comes to working with complex developmental trauma, it seems like therapists can’t get enough tools for their tool bag. And yet what determines effectiveness in this challenging arena of practice are crucial dimensions of the therapeutic relationship that go beyond any technical intervention. In thisRead More…
Exploring an Alternative Career Path Leslie Austin Despite all the parallels between therapy and coaching, relatively few therapists have been able to launch successful coaching practices. This workshop will focus on three key elements in becoming a successful coach: establishing a solid business model, understanding how the goals and boundaries of coaching differ from therapy,Read More…
Understanding Sensory Processing and Sensory Strategies in Treatment Tara Delaney More than 90 percent of children diagnosed with autism suffer from sensory processing difficulties that underlie their extreme, reactive behaviors. But typically, even in therapy, there’s not enough attention paid to these difficulties play in the academic struggles, behavioral problems, and coordination challenges that theseRead More…
The Changing Face of Committed Relationships Tammy Nelson More couples today than ever before are negotiating their monogamy in new and creative ways, including open marriage, polyamory, group marriages, transgender relationships, and a variety of intentional partnerships. As therapists, we need to understand these new developments, the challenges they bring, and the skills required ofRead More…
Busting the Common Myths Sally Winston & Martin Seif Almost everything we learned about OCD in graduate school prior to 2000 was just plain wrong: it’s not rare, obvious, hard to treat, or a manifestation of deep underlying conflict. We now know it’s common, often unrecognized, and that it’s far more helpful to treat whatRead More…
How Brain Science Can Inform Interventions Frank Anderson Therapists often get shaken and lose confidence in their approach when a client’s trauma response edges into seemingly uncontrollable extremes of rage, panic, or suicidal desperation. This workshop provides an essential road map for treating difficult trauma cases through a detailed exploration of the neurobiological processes ofRead More…
Creating the “Good Enough” Ending Christine Courtois All therapy must eventually end, but endings can come about for any number of reasons: from the positive (successful treatment of a specific issue) to the negative (treatment stalling or insurance running out) to outside factors (relocation, retirement, illness, death). Whatever the case, endings can evoke many issues,Read More…
Treating Clients Who Challenge Our Capacity for Compassion Noel Larson How do you encourage clients who’ve been perpetrators to take responsibility for the pain and suffering they’ve caused? It can be a daunting task, especially since such clients can’t develop the capacity to accept responsibility for having done harm without first having had the experienceRead More…
Overcoming the Challenges in Therapy Sandra Wartski Most therapists know that treating eating disorders (EDs) can be a very rocky journey. They also know that a culture awash with unrealistic ideals of body perfection can further exacerbate clients’ distorted relationships with food and body image. This workshop will provide therapists with a step-by-step approach to navigating these clientsRead More…
Strategies for Rewiring the Brain Linda Graham The more we apply the discoveries of neuroscience to our clinical work, the more skilled we can become at tailoring interventions to match clients’ specific difficulties and guide them through the changes in brain functioning that best catalyze their growth. Whether clients are stuck in repetitive defensive patterns, strugglingRead More…
Succeeding with Our Most Reluctant Clients Janet Sasson Edgette Most teens are only in therapy because their parents, their teachers, the juvenile court judge, or some other authority has told them they must see a therapist—or else. Consequently, they often find standard therapeutic bromides and shrink-wrapped attempts to “engage” them artificial, even infuriating. This workshopRead More…
Special Issues in Working with Marginalized Clients Anita Mandley If you work with African Americans, Native Americans, Holocaust survivors and their descendants, or any other disenfranchised clients, you’re often working with the legacies of cultural and historical trauma. This workshop will open a path toward addressing wounds and issues that too often go ignored andRead More…
A Family Approach Jean Malpas Therapists working with the families of transgender and gender-expansive youth (TGEY) are facing questions for which there are no easy answers. What’s the best way to respond when parents of a transgender teenager refuse to give access to hormone therapy? Or when the parents of an 8-year-old gender nonconforming childRead More…
Helping Clients Rediscover Real Life Linda Graham We’re used to exploring how addictions can lead to broken relationships with family and friends, but what about ways in which our digital addictions can negatively affect those same things? Think about it: on average, American adults check their cell phones every 6.5 minutes. American teenagers spend almostRead More…
Strategies for Surviving and Thriving Patricia Papernow Stepfamilies begin with such high hopes, but all too often they find themselves stuck in toxic cycles of tension and conflict. Although 42 percent of Americans have a close stepfamily relationship, few therapists ever receive solid training in helping their clients in stepfamilies to meet their intense challenges.Read More…
The Brave New World of Relationship Dilemmas Alexandra Solomon Today’s emerging adults are navigating a brave new dating world of hookups, friends with benefits, and other ambiguous relationships, facilitated and amplified by new technologies and digital platforms. Often these digital natives crave connection and foresee marriage and children in their future, even if their currentRead More…
Collective Trauma as a Clinical Issue Patrick Dougherty While we know the regular eruptions of violence from mass shootings, police brutality, and acts of terrorism that dominate the news cycle often trigger anxiety, anger, and genuine despair in many of our clients, most of us have no training in how to bring up the impactRead More…
A Radical Approach to Healing Interpersonal Wounds Janis Abrahms Spring Forgiveness has been held up as the gold standard of recovery from interpersonal injuries, but in real life, hurt parties often find that they can’t or won’t forgive, particularly when the offender is unrepentant or dead. In this workshop, you’ll learn to reframe the healingRead More…
Strategies to Enhance Mood and Well-Being Leslie Korn If we are what we eat, then beyond the mind-body connection there’s also a food-mind-body connection. This workshop will explore the latest nutritional research to inform psychotherapeutic practice and how diet can affect mood, as well as the links between depression, inflammation, and cognitive function. You’ll exploreRead More…
Separating Myths from Reality Frank Anderson With so much controversy and contradictory research about the effectiveness of psychopharmacological interventions, it’s hard to know how to best work with your clients around the issue of meds. What are the new most promising medications on the market? Are antidepressants really any better than placebos? Why are so manyRead More…
Changing the Family Dance Lynn Lyons Anxiety can be a very persistent master. When it moves into families, it takes over daily routines, schoolwork, and recreation. To make matters worse, the things adults (including many therapists and school staff) do to help anxious children can actually make the anxiety stronger. Fortunately, research shows that what weRead More…
Virtual Reality in Therapy Michael Greene Long touted as a potentially powerful and disruptive technology, virtual reality (VR) has moved into the mainstream, with low-cost consumer products becoming readily available. Some people believe that VR has vast implications for therapists, both as a tool to be used with specific types of issues and more broadlyRead More…
Adventures in the Physics of Vulnerability Brené Brown Research has shown that fully owning our stories of our most significant stumbles and falls can help us take our life narratives in empowering new directions. This workshop will introduce you to The Rising Strong Process, an approach to turning toward the pain of our setbacks, ratherRead More…
An Emotionally Focused Approach Parts 1 & 2 Kathryn Rheem Volatile, emotionally escalated clients can be among the most challenging cases couples therapists regularly work with. Such clients can often be set off by seemingly negligible events, making sessions difficult for both partners and their therapist. Typically, core issues of attachment distress are at theRead More…
Enhancing Your Therapeutic Impact Parts 1 & 2 Jeffrey Zeig There’s something both inspirational and humbling about watching the clinical work of master therapists like Virginia Satir, Carl Whitaker, Salvador Minuchin, and Milton Erickson. While it’s tempting to think they have a unique therapeutic gift, it’s even more helpful to ask: “How do they doRead More…
Challenging Some Common Myths Parts 1 & 2 Marty Klein If you ask clients what they want from sex, they’ll usually tell you pleasure and closeness. But that’s typically not what they actually focus on during sex. Instead, they’re thinking about how they look, what they sound or smell like, what their partner is thinking,Read More…
How Therapists Can Help Parts 1 & 2 Phyllis Booth & Dafna Lender Unlike teens, young children can’t readily talk about feelings, don’t sit in one place, and often can’t follow rules and directions, even when you’re playing a game. So how can you incorporate these crucial family members into your sessions in a wayRead More…
How to Set Limits and Hold Them Accountable Parts 1 & 2 Wendy Behary Narcissists are notoriously difficult to work with. They can be arrogant, condescending, lacking in empathy, and so self-absorbed they seem incapable of forming genuine relationships with anyone, including their therapist. Since being nice is usually ineffective with such clients, in orderRead More…
Turning “Resistance” into Opportunity Parts 1 & 2 Clifton Mitchell The key to navigating through therapeutic standstills is to use them as valuable clues for steering the therapeutic conversation more skillfully, rather than seeing them as obstacles to be overcome. In this highly practical workshop, you’ll explore how to use critical junctures in a sessionRead More…
One Step Forward and Two Steps Back Parts 1 & 2 Lisa Ferentz While every therapist understands that treatment is most effective when it unfolds within the context of a safe therapeutic relationship, it’s often challenging to build a meaningful alliance with traumatized clients who turn therapy into an emotional roller coaster. This isRead More…
New Perspectives on Gender Diversity Parts 1 & 2 Margaret Nichols & Laura Jacobs Transgender and gender-expansive people are more visible today than they were in the past, and there’s been a corresponding acceptance of gender diversity as normal and varying along a continuum. Indeed, you’ve probably seen or heard of clients who describe themselvesRead More…
Working with Avoidant and Disorganized Clients Parts 1 & 2 Diane Poole Heller Many clients bring to therapy the remnants of attachment wounds experienced before they learned to speak, so talk therapy is often ineffective at getting to the root of early memories that can continue to roil emotions and disturb relationships. This workshop presentsRead More…
Breaking Eggshells Parts 1 & 2 Kenneth Hardy Rather than signaling an end to racism, the Obama presidency has revealed how much stereotypes and tensions about race still pervade much of American society. But even though we may want to broach the issue of race openly, honestly, and respectfully, too often, we typically feel constrainedRead More…
Uplifting Interventions to Heal the Heart and Rewire the Brain Parts 1 & 2 Courtney Armstrong Research from brain science and positive psychology shows that activating positive emotional states is the fastest route to instilling hope, stimulating creativity, spurring motivation, and empowering our clients. But how do you help clients access resourceful states when they’reRead More…
An Internal Family Systems (IFS) Approach Parts 1 & 2 Richard Schwartz One of the chief obstacles to effective trauma treatment can be the therapist’s view of trauma symptoms like dissociation, rage, and suicidal thoughts as frightening evidence of deep pathology, rather than an expression of the natural human impulse toward self-protection. This workshop willRead More…
Enhancing the Impact of Couples Therapy Parts 1 & 2 Susan Johnson & Daniel Siegel Understanding the neurobiology of the brain not only explains how change happens, it also translates into more effective psychotherapy. In this dynamic workshop, a psychotherapist and a neuropsychiatrist offer a dialogue demonstrating the relevance of neuroscience to the process ofRead More…
Finding the Right Fit for Clients Parts 1 & 2 Joan Borysenko As meditation practice is increasingly being integrated into psychotherapy, therapists too often see it as a one-size-fits-all remedy. But these practices actually include a range of tools that can be more effective when tailored to a client’s history, personality organization, religious or spiritualRead More…
When Talk Isn’t Enough Parts 1 & 2 Bessel van der Kolk The last 20 years have provided us with great advances in understanding the impact of trauma on developing brains and how it interferes with the capacity to concentrate and filter out irrelevant information. In this workshop, you’ll review the latest research and interventionsRead More…
